


Sunlight, May evening

by iriswallpaper



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Happily Ever After, Late life love, Lost Love, M/M, Missed Opportunities, Overuse of italics, Pining Sherlock, Regret, Resolved Pining, Retirement, Retirementlock, Rumination, implied happy ending, overuse of ellipses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-29
Updated: 2017-09-29
Packaged: 2019-01-06 18:07:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12216135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iriswallpaper/pseuds/iriswallpaper
Summary: Sherlock's solitary retirement in the country.Sometimes in May, the sun slants at just the right angle to bring back memories of another Spring, a Spring spent chasing criminals in London with a constant companion at his side.Sherlock allows himself one evening a year to consider what might have been.





	Sunlight, May evening

**Author's Note:**

> I'm exhausted and have no idea where this even came from, but my brain won't let me sleep until I get it out. I hope you like it. 
> 
> Unbetaed. Hell, it's even unedited. Blame me for any and all mistakes.

It happened a few times a year, taking him by surprise every time.

He was happy. If happy wasn’t the right word, then he was content. The quiet suited him. He slept as late as he could and stayed up all night. He ate when he felt like it and bathed often. The lack of routine was a routine itself.

It happened while doing the most mundane of tasks: taking his dinner out of the microwave, wiping the dishes at the kitchen sink, looking up at a clear summer sky while turning the compost. He was swept with such longing that it was a physical sensation, a punch in the gut radiating up into his chest and down into his testicles. A moment of tangency that took his breath away.

_If only … if only … if only_

It didn’t matter. The if onlies only deepened the ache in his chest, made it settle around his heart like a fur muff. 

When those twinges of pining flared, Sherlock tamed them with work. Not the brainwork of his younger years but hard physical labor. The more his heart tried to betray him, the harder he worked his back and arms and legs. Along with active composting, he also tended a dozen hives at five different farms in addition to his own four hives at the back of the garden. The garden, his solace of hard work, where he turned the soil with a shovel instead of hiring a tractor to disk and plow. He planted and hoed and pruned with a vengeance, eschewing all chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, preferring to pick insects off his tender plants by hand. 

When the garden was put to bed for winter he turned to the cottage, upgrading plumbing, rewiring, hand carving wood to make wainscoting to match the parts that deteriorated from the long years the cottage sat vacant. He sanded and varnished, hammered nails, patched plaster, reshingled the porch roof, reglazed windows. Some said it was a labor of love but to Sherlock it was the opposite - it was labor to avoid love, the feelings the kept tamped down and carefully locked away.

_If only … if only … if only_

He liked the cottage. He liked the garden. He liked the gravel drive that crunched under the tires of his infrequent visitors. He liked the lawn mowed short, the roses left to grow tall, the heat of noon and the cool of morning. But love it? No, he didn’t love it. Love was reserved for London, the city that held his heart. And for his best…

No. 

_If only … if only … if only_

It happened once each May, in early evening. The late sunlight, slanting at just the right angle, with just the right yellow tint that reminded him of the Spring before he left to travel the world in search of a madman’s gang. A gang of shadows that disappeared as he approached, a Spring and Summer that turned into Fall then Winter, then another round of seasons before he finally got in over his head with a bad bunch of Serbians. It ended when his brother got involved and dragged him back to (beloved) London but to a world gone sideways, a London where his friend no longer loved him, a world taken up by a golden haired woman with big blue eyes…

 _No._ Not today. He’d think about that some other time.

Today, he’d lay in the hammock in the May evening and relish the Spring air against his wrinkled cheeks. He’d remember a May of chasing criminals through London’s alleyways, a Spring of candles on restaurant tables, two years of work and dinner and cohabitation in a cozy flat in Central London with a man who exclaimed aloud at his brilliant deductions.

He yawned, stretched his arms over his head and settled in. The hammock swayed gently. Bees buzzed among the newly-blooming nasturtiums. The mulch he’d spread on the flower beds earlier in the day gave the air a sweet tang. Really, he could fall asleep if he wasn’t intent on remembering.

_If only … if only … if only_

Remembering. 

And conjecturing. 

There were times, time they walked side by side through evening light, arms swinging in tandem, when the back of his friend’s hand would brush his. Not once, not twice by accident, but five, six times. Was it intentional? At the time he was convinced it was a meaningless, random occurrence. But now, after years of reflection, he wondered. Was it more - an invitation? If he’d only turned his palm up, would his friend have taken his hand?

Other times, across a small cafe table. His friend, leaning forward, eyes shining, lips parted. Was it an invitation? What if he’d leaned in to meet him, parted his own lips, tilted his head? Would his friend have closed the distance?

Late nights, playing his violin at the window, looking out on the occasional delivery men and beat cops. His friend, reading the evening papers, curled on the sofa under a throw hand crocheted by their landlady. 

_Mrs. Hudson, God rest her soul._ A tear slipped from his eye, rippled over the crows feet at the corner and slid into his iron-grey curls. He wiped at his temple with the back of a weathered hand. He wasn’t going to get maudlin over everyone he’d ever lost. And loved. Loved and lost - he could allow himself to think it now. He’d loved Mrs. Hudson like a surrogate mother. Her absence left an aching hole in his heart these many years later.

But today, this May day, with the quality of the Spring sunlight just right, he intended to think of what might have been. Just this day, this one day a year when longing overtook reason and he allowed indulges.

He allowed himself to imagine how it would have felt to loom over someone so much smaller than himself, to lean down to brush a kiss on mauve lips, to brush silky hair off a furrowed forehead. Of how tapered fingers would have curved, clutching his curls, as they kissed. Of a lean, small body against his, shorter arms around his waist, shorter legs twined around his. Golden-tinged skin warm against his pale skin, dark blue eyes smiling into his icy blue ones. 

_If only … if only … if only_

Enough.

He swallowed and wiped his eyes again. The sun had gone over the horizon; the garden turned chilly in the gloaming. He struggled to sit up, then swung his legs over the side of the hammock. Back beginning to ache, he struggled with the rope still clinging to his clothing until he was at last on his feet. Pulling at the hem to straighten his cardigan, Sherlock turned toward the warm yellow light spilling from the cottage windows. 

Had he caught a flicker of movement at the edge of the garden? Was that a silhouette against the setting sun? Or a trick of the light and his emotions, overwrought from his annual indulgence? Sherlock turned, squinting. 

A shadow, a man, stooped from years of care, of work, of raising a family. Moving slowly now, leaning heavily on his cane. A shape at once familiar and alien - a shadow of another silhouette he’d known as a younger man, a companion unobtrusive and constant. The shadow resolved into a figure, hair short and white, plaid shirt and cardigan, lined hand clutching a cane. 

_John..._

After all the decades, after the hurt and the ache and the loneliness. John, here, smiling and opening his arms.

_If only …_

_Yes_

__

__

_Now._

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Sunlight, May Evening (Poetry Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14572614) by [796116311389](https://archiveofourown.org/users/796116311389/pseuds/796116311389)




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